


Medium

by ZomBrie



Series: Ghosts of Sinner's Past [8]
Category: Hellsing
Genre: Gen, Gender Neutral, Ghosts, Mentions of Death, Named Reader, Other, Reader Insert, cursing, mediumship, vague mentions of child death, vague mentions of violence against children, well one ghost, you finally win one against the ol count
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 08:02:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21032939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZomBrie/pseuds/ZomBrie
Summary: “…could I request where the reader uses their medium powers on a mission and Alucard begins to believe them?” Victory usually tastes so sweet but not at the expense of the innocent[Alucard/Gender Neutral Reader]Warning: vague mentions of violence against children





	Medium

Mediumship is nowhere near as glamorous as the entertainment industry loves to portray; it’s not all traipsing (see: trespassing) on ancient burial grounds and hurling invasive questions into the air in the hopes of something Otherworldly™ responding. You don’t often see apparitions- full body or otherwise- and it’s rare to hear much more than a single whisper, in fact the vast majority of the time your dealings with the dearly departed amounts to little more than just random surges or depletions of energy.

This is not to say that your spirituality is weak, it’s just that… that’s what “ghosts” are- energy left behind by the living like an imprint of history, and this energy can be influenced by events, past or present, and passionate emotions, negative or positive, thus rendering any argument that they exist a hollow shot in the dark. Because _you_ can’t prove what you (often) can’t see, not to others, especially in this day and age of technology with photo/video manipulation. And the fact that mediumship has a bad rep due to prior exploiters and frauds.

But you purposefully leave that last bit out of the conversation cause even though He’s acting like He’s not interested, you _know_ that Alucard is tuning in.

Not that you can blame Him though. What else is there to do?

From the moment your little menagerie of hunters stepped out of the Hellsing jet, absolutely nothing has happened. Nothing, zilch, nada. This might be ideal in other situations but you were promised a paycheck upon the eradication of a vampire who’s “more monster than man” and the subsequent purification of his/her hunting grounds, and goddammit you can’t let this mission stain your record! That and Mr. Tall Dark and Frightening is assigned as one of your partners.

Well… more like you’re the one that’s assigned but yadda yadda fine details and all that.

“So in other words…” Seras pauses with a drawn out vowel, “you feel ghosts rather than see or hear them?”

You shrug in response before catching your boot over a pile of broken glass. It’s inevitable that you’ll trek through some before the mission’s end- hell before the night’s over because of friggin course a bloodsucker sets up shop in an old, forgotten hospital- however the less shards you have to pluck out of the soles later the better.

“Depends. I hear Pip just fine, and on occasion he visually manifests himself for me, but that’s only cause of his connection with you. Uses your energy.”

This seems to satisfy the young vampire for she gives you a quiet hum in acknowledgment with nothing else to follow. Silence hangs over your small group as the three of you inch down the hall, briefly turning your attention into every passing doorway and you specifically avoiding stepping on to jagged scraps of splintered wood and dusty glass; these two might be immune to pathogens but that doesn’t mean you are.

“So you sensing energy… you mean that literally?” She asks.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Then riddle me this, revenant,” Alucard’s voice disrupts the conversation, chases away any semblance of peace and echoes into every dark corner of the walls around you. The fine hairs all up and down your skin suddenly stand to attention with the intrusive introduction of His baritone. It’s not as if you forgot that He’s there, or even that He’s eavesdropping, you just didn’t expect Him to vocalize His opinion. Should’ve known better, it’s friggin Alucard after all. “Do you ‘sense the energy’ of our target?”

That’s the thing.

You don’t.

You can pick up both of your companion’s energies easily- Alucard’s is oppressive and dark and just plain inhuman while Seras’s is warm and jovial, but scarred, reticent, as if she has a blanket of secrets weighing down her back until she aches. That’s the best way you can describe it at least.

But there’s no other energy nearby.

Now you’ll always be the first to admit that there are certain limitations to your spiritual sensitivity- for instance you wouldn’t be able to sense someone in the parking lot from this deep in the complex- and there are many factors outside of your control that contributes, with species acting as a major contender. After all, man eating monsters tend to amass a surplus of energy with every soul they devour, human or otherwise.

So why can’t you feel the target’s energy? Sir Integra herself described them as “a gluttonous, beastial affront against the Lord with a deplorable appetite for children”; loss of humanity, depraved morality, the murder of kids… merely one of these would be sufficient enough for you, let alone _all three_, so this should have ease akin to your breathing offending Alucard in some way.

Then why…?

“I’m callin’ it,” Seras huffs before her boots cease their trek, which (shockingly) causes your other vampiric squadmate to pause as well. No need to single yourself out, strength in numbers as the saying goes, so you do the same. “They’re not here.”

“I agree, but why not ask Hellsing’s residential medium? After all they’re _supposed_ to be able to sense this thing’s energy.”

The walls quickly sprint by in your vision as you snap your attention to the right, and you channel every poisonous thought and cutting emotion into the glare you fix the back of His head with. Alucard feels the weight, you know He does, just as you don’t need to see it in order to know that there’s a self satisfied grin stretching across His face.

God, He’s such a petty bitch.

Then again so are you.

“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you could use the energy of your soul to sense someone else’s!” You spit out through a clenched jaw, but you’re not yet done. Now for the zinger. “Wait! That’s right. You can’t cause you don’t **have** o-”

Cold.

A plume of icy chill kisses your pebbling skin. Fine hairs rise. Your spine straightens. Instincts, or a sort of magnetic pull to your right. Not Alucard though. Further.

Over your shoulder.

A winding stairwell.

Energy. Young. Scared. On the same floor. Your floor. The first stair.

There’s a-

“Murray?” You hear someone ask but you quickly shush them.

Because there’s a ghost at the base of the stairwell in the little passage off to the group’s right; it’s not strong enough to create a perfect visual, or rather much of a visual at all, instead you’re graced with an opaque silhouette vaguely humanoid in shape. You can make out where the head and shoulders are supposed to be, though the legs dissipate below (presumably) the knees, and judging by the relatively small size you can almost safely assume that this spirit comes from a child.

An assumption that dries out the roof of your mouth, tightens the muscles in your throat until it hurts to swallow; child ghosts have always proven to be the most harrowing in terms of purification, if nothing else because of the implications of their demise. No one cherishes the idea of dead children, after all.

It’s in the nature of your job, unfortunately, and it’s time to get to work so first thing’s first: is this ghost related to the mission?

“Do either of y’all know any history about this place?” You ask in a voice that practically toes on screechy, and yes you’re aware that your drawl is a touch thick right now. “A children’s hospital, maybe?”

Seras stumbles over her words, likely a result from your behavior considering this is the first she’s bore witness to this side of your role, but she quickly regains her faculties with a throat-clearing cough.

“N-no, it’s umm.. was just a general hospital. Mostly used during one of the World Wars.”

Your kneecaps ache- cold, sharp, it bites at the crevices between your joints and it slinks down both shins until your toes start to feel chilly. A sort of rolling, hollow loftiness churns the pit of your stomach, and your head seems far too heavy to be sitting on such a stiff neck, and a dusting of salty tears sting the fleshy corners of your eyes. A scream tears at your jaw.

But you don’t panic, there’s no need to because this reaction is not yours. The pain in your legs, the woozy light headedness that’s sapping your energy, the involuntary urge to sob and shriek until the lining of your throat feels like sandpaper? None of this belongs to you. This is your body reacting to the stimuli from the child’s ghost.

Or as you like to call it: minor possession.

“Why do you ask..?”

A vampire with a preference for younger victims.

“Murray?”

The shade of a terrified kid, silhouette incomplete, and everything from your knees down plagued with an icy burn.

…there’s no denying it, what you’re currently staring at, subsequently what’s burrowing into your bones and siphoning your energy, is a casualty of this mission’s target.

You hear someone call your name, more specifically your _first_ name, but with so much metaphorical cotton stuffed in your ears you can’t really determine who so you instead lift a pointer finger towards the spirit; perhaps crawling through mud would be easier. God you feel so weak.

Seras is the first to respond.

“Wha’ is it? I don’t see anything.”

Through your teeth you manage to bite out: “g-ghost.” And that is perhaps the worst thing you could’ve said or done because the shrill gasp that she unleashes is nothing short of jarring, and she bounces from one foot over to the next and back again as her red eyes widen and glimmer with what you could only call excitement.

“Where?! Where is it, where do you see it?!”

These questions gush out of her like a broken spout with many more to follow, but you can’t help but to tune them out cause this? What she’s doing right now? Yeah this is the exact reason why you prefer to tend to spirits by yourself; the fascination that borderlines fetishization that most carry with their individual worldviews often leads to disrespecting those who have long since passed. Hence your profession boggled down with money-grubbing charlatans, and entire programs dedicated to ghost hunting- ah, your apologies, you mean “paranormal investigating”. It’s distasteful, it’s tacky, and it’s downright insulting, and it etches itself deep into the lines between your brows and the downward tug of your frown.

This… must convey your message perfectly for the young vampire’s delight gradually bleeds into something more somber.

Maybe if you weren’t so tired you’d find it in yourself to let it go? “That’s one of our target’s victims, Victoria. Try to show some respect?”

At least she has the decency to look ashamed, unlike her master whom you can feel the glare He levels you with behind the orange tint of His glasses. Any other time and the weight of His ire would intimidate you, but you honestly don’t care right now.

The child’s spirit rises and bobs up the stairs, as if it’s simulating the act of walking, and with it goes the sensation of ice and pain and fear out of your joints. From beside you, on your right, you can barely make out Seras quietly saying “I think I see something.” It rounds the sharp bend in the stairwell before it continues its ascension until you can’t see- or sense- it anymore.

And then something dawns on you.

“I think he/she wants us to follow.”

Alucard scoffs from somewhere behind you. “Is it going to lead us to the target?”

A nod is all that you give Him. He in turn allows a single barking laugh to rip from His throat out of derision, judging by the sound in the way it’s meant to curl around your cheeks until they feel hot, however you’re rather confident in your assessment. In fact you’re very nearly absolutely certain that that is what’s going to happen: follow the ghost and you’ll find the target.

Which brings you to your final conclusion, one that Seras seems to be grasping at herself. “Wait. If this ghost genuinely is a victim, then it really shouldn’t… exist per say, yeah?”

“Yep. Man eating monsters, especially vampires, essentially absorb souls as a means to substitute what they’ve lost.” You glance at her in your peripheral. “Which means one of two things. Either my hunch is wrong and this spirit truly is an echo from the past, or…

“My hunch is right, the spirit is a casualty, and our target’s already dead.”

Silence picks up where your sentence ends; the nothingness of the quiet permeates through one ear and out the other, and it presses down on the bones of your shoulders until your spine shivers. There’s a tension in the air not unlike a rubber band being stretched from both ends, you can feel it in the cavity of ribcage, and though you could easily attribute the stress to the hospital’s atmosphere or the very real possibility of your estimate holding true, your instincts- built from some odd months worth of experience and adversity- place the blame on something else.

Or rather some_one_ else.

Alucard.

Because His opinion of you, and of your work, is coated in an acidic venom, and He’s very open about this with every sharp word and barbed look that He deems worthy of His time. Yet He hasn’t said anything else, hasn’t done anything else since His last outburst of sarcasm, and it makes you hyper aware of **_Him_**. As if He’s going to attack at any moment, physically or otherwise. Does He disagree? Is He biding for time until the finale where He can deliver yet another calamitous blow to your already scarred ego? … Is He actually considering that you may be right about this?

Not possible. His pride is greater than His hatred for your existence.

And on this dismal thought, you decide to not dedicate any more energy in to solving the enigma that is Alucard and you take a few strides towards the stairs before you mumble out a “only one way to find out.” You don’t bother waiting for your companions.

Not twenty minutes later the three of you are provided with a definite answer to your theory.

But you don’t gloat, there’s not even a hint of desire to. Because, after all, no one cherishes the idea of dead children.

**Author's Note:**

> a/u: this one's a lil dark, yeah? first time writing about ghosts too, so hopefully it turned out a-okay. slowly getting through our list of hurdles you and the ol count gotta go through before we get to the meat n 'tatoes of the ~mystery~. if ya liked it don't be afraid to leave me some kudos and comments- even if it's just you screaming into the void cause hashtag whole ass mood. and i'll see y'all in the next installment <3


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